Playing it fair with $40,000

“It would have been easy to keep going with it,” Vargas said.

But Jones has always thought about others, his mother, Victoria McCullough, said.

The Burbank resident recalled that when her son was a child and they were driving on the freeway, he saw a wandering dog on the road and wanted to help.

“I had to stop in the middle of the freeway to save the dog,” McCullough said.

McCullough was proud that her son gave the money back to Greenblat because, she said, “doing the right thing is always the right thing.”

Jones returned the money to Greenblat simply because, he said, it was fair.

“This old man worked all his life for this money,” Jones said. “I haven’t worked all my life, so it wasn’t right for me to take the money.”

He said he pictured that Greenblat was his grandmother, a woman who worked hard and struggled to raise her children.

“I know how it is,” Jones said.

But life hasn’t been easy for Jones, either.

He was hit by a motorist while working at a Santa Monica grocery store and has been on worker’s compensation for several months. He hasn’t been receiving payments of late, so money has been tight.

“I didn’t even have a Christmas this year,” he said.

Taking the money would have been an easy thing to do and would have helped with his financial distress, but Jones said he believes what goes around, comes around.

“It’s karma,” he said. “Maybe things will start to change for me and get better.”